August Vilella’s Surrealistic Paintings of Big-Eyed Creatures

Barcelona based artist August Vilella frequently describes his oil paintings as images of “his past and future through the subconscious mind.” The large central figures of his work are monstrous creatures with giant, protruding eyes drawn from his imagination. With their long, deformed and almost insect-like bodies that seem to dissipate into the air, we should feel repulsed by their appearance, and yet their big-eyed expressions evoke feelings of empathy; loneliness, despair, longing, and hope are all themes represented by Vilella’s creatures.

Many images employ what famous Surrealist painter Salvador Dali called “the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling,” where Vilella’s subjects are placed in an unfamiliar context or rendered in a way that doubles as the image’s landscape; a cloudy seaside, rocky golden cliffs, and other strange environments are depicted. Vilella says that he paints his work as “a figurative work of art,” he says, “the result of this practice evokes a dreamlike aura and a magic, metaphoric, and even philosophical language, which invites the observing visitor to reflect.”